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Labor Problem at Jamestown

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Labor Problem at Jamestown
The Labor Problem at Jamestown, 1607-1618
By
Edmund S. Morgan

In 1502, Columbus set sailed on his last voyage to the New World. The year 1606, James I issues a charter to the Virginia Company for tract of land along the mid-Atlantic coast. This led to Jamestown. The first settlement in America was Jamestown. It was established in 1607 with a 104 male settlers, which was led my John Smith. This article is about the early hard times with Jamestown. Soon it led up to the American Revolution, but the article only goes up to 1618. The article overall idea was the problem with labor in Jamestown. It talked about the people, laws, wealth, etc. The main points in this article were: Spanish discovers, Native American troubles, and working conditions. It seems to my that the author wrote this article because to educated others, and to show the conditions and problems they had in Jamestown that led to slavery. The thesis of this article is, “ But in the absence of direct evidence we may discover among the ideas current in late sixteenth and early seventeenth century England some clues to the probable state of mind of the first Virginians clues to the way they felt about work, whether in the old world or the new clues to habits of thinking that may have conditioned their perceptions of what confronted them at Jamestown, clues even to the tangled web of motives that made later Virginians masters of slaves,”(page 3, Morgan).

It was the Spanish who had exploits surpassed all others. They knew things about the new world then anyone. The English started translating writings from Spanish to learn these secrets. They were searching for good area to settle. They first found an area that was ruled by a powerful Indian tribe which led them to leave, “They picked an area with a more powerful, more extensive, and more effective Indian government than existed, King Powhatan, the Monacans,”(page 4, Morgan). Reading about the Spanish experiences led to discovers. Then Englishmen

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